Paradise ponders, caramel popcorn edition... I finished up all my bookkeeping work yesterday morning, and then Debbie and I finalized our Christmas menu. After that, we were off to the store to buy the groceries needed. Along the way, we stopped at three places to drop off Christmas treats that Debbie had baked. Lots of smiles from that! :) After we got home, our friend and neighbor Tim D. called to wish us Merry Christmas, and to ask if he could come over to deliver a treat he'd made for us: caramel popcorn. He made it without much salt, so that Debbie could safely eat it. We sat and talked with him for an hour or so, while Debbie and I “sampled” about half the popcorn. :) I'm pretty sure the rest of it will disappear by this evening!

While I was in the grocery store shoveling supplies into my cart, I noticed that they had some sea scallops left – the same big ones that we'd so enjoyed last Friday. I grabbed a pound and a half of them, hoping that Debbie wouldn't mind making them for dinner. She didn't. :) They were just as delicious as they were last Friday!

UPS brought us a bunch of boxes, one of which was a gift from one of Debbie's friends down in San Diego: a dozen gigantic chocolate-covered strawberries. I ate one mid-day, and it was about as scrumptious as a confection can get. I had bits of chocolate and strawberry juice running through my beard, and I didn't care. Ate it in front of a roaring fire, kicked back on a comfortable couch – decadent, it was...

Our tree was completely decorated a few days ago, but this morning is the first time I thought to take a photo of it without the sun behind it.

We're off this morning to Salt Lake City, to visit a seafood market and nab ourselves some crab meat for our crab cakes on Saturday evening. While we're there, we're also going to see what's on offer at the Red Iguana. It's at the point of an addiction, I'm afraid – we have trouble even imagining a visit to Salt Lake City without stopping there!